CyberAlert -- 06/23/1997 -- Brown Blackout

the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications

Brown Blackout; If Only McGovern Won; Russert Sticks Left

Hear Tim Lamer, Director
of the MRC's Free Market Project, discuss the MRC's Businessmen
Behaving Badly study. He'll appear on Mary Matalin's syndicated
CBS Talk Radio Network show in the 4pm ET (3pm CT, 2pm MT, 1pm PT)
half hour on Monday, June 23. That's the second hour of Matalin's
show which airs live from 3 to 6pm ET, so adjust appropriately if
she's heard in your market on delay. For an affiliate list go to: http://www.cbsradio.com/
MM/affiliate.html (In Washington, DC, for instance, Lamer will
be heard from 8:05 to 8:30pm on WWRC; in San Diego on KSDO at 8pm
PT; in Baltimore on WBAL at midnight and in Portland Maine on WGAN
at 2am Tuesday morning.)
As you may have seen, the
study on how businessmen are poorly portrayed on prime time TV,
often as murderers, was featured in a Wall Street Journal
editorial on Friday. The study can be read at: http://www.freemarketproject.org/

1) The Ron Brown vacuum.
A Sunday Washington Times editorial reminded me that before the
Wednesday Prime Time Live story on Ron Brown the New Yorker
carried a piece by Peter Boyer on Nolanda Hill's charges. But
neither has prompted a peep from the other networks or even any
other ABC show. Thursday night and Friday morning the networks
were silent again, MRC news analysts Steve Kaminski, Clay Waters
and Gene Eliasen informed me. (See the June 20 CyberAlert for
details on what Hill charges about Ron Brown.)

Friday morning Good
Morning America brought on Bill Kristol, Cokie Roberts and George
Stephanopoulos to discuss the latest political events. But host
Charlie Gibson didn't raise the Brown issue. Instead, the four
talked about how Gingrich is in trouble, the status of China and
MFN, and the tobacco talks. Friday evening I did a
Nexis search and learned that no major newspaper had run a word on
the Brown matter. In fact, the only print story I have come across
is a Reuter piece I found on Yahoo that I think was featured by
the Drudge Report. Reuter fed the story at 1:58am on Thursday
morning, too late for Thursday's papers but in plenty of time for
Friday's editions (and Thursday's morning TV shows). My Nexis search turned up
just one hit -- a Washington Post item on how well Prime Time Live
did in the ratings. In Friday's Post John Carmody noted: "The
highest-rated program on any network Wednesday night was ABC's
Prime Time Live, which featured an interview with Nolanda Hill,
the former owner of Channel 50 here and onetime business partner
and friend of the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. The hour
averaged a 10.6 national rating and a 19 percent audience
share." If it weren't for Law
& Order being in repeats and lack of interest in Simon &
Simon rescuing their kidnapped mother in a 1994 movie re-run on
CBS, even fewer people would have learned about Ron Brown.

2) The thin air in the
Mile High City is making CBS reporter Bill Plante a little goofy.
MRC news analyst Steve Kaminski caught this assertion in Plante's
June 20 CBS This Morning story from the economic summit in Denver:

"Not all of the
leaders here are going to be anxious to follow the American
economic model. The Europeans in particular say that their publics
expect much more in the way of social service spending and the
American economy had to make deep government spending cuts." Reality Check: "Deep
government spending cuts"? They must believe such blatantly
false "reporting" as forwarded by CBS. In the June 2
National Review Ed Rubenstein countered the claim of cuts in the
balanced budget deal.
"Claim: Spending will
be cut $250 billion over five years."
Right Data: Cut from what?
In budget-speak, 'cuts' are measured from a rapidly growing
baseline showing what the government would spend of it were left
on automatic pilot. So while the agreement holds spending below
the baseline, we estimate total outlays in 2002 will be at least
$248 billion, or 15.2 percent, above this year's level."

3) The Soviets exported
misery and totalitarian rule around the world. They had a wall
built in Germany and shot anyone trying to escape the paradise.
They had nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S. and put missiles in
Cuba. They and China were the forces behind the wars America
fought in Korea and Vietnam. Or so I always thought. USA Today
founder Al Neuharth straightened me out. If only the West hadn't
forced the Cold War all would have been fine.

"What if Watergate
had elected McGovern?" Neuharth asked on his June 20 USA
Today column. One difference: "The Cold War would have ended
in the '70s rather than in the '90s. McGovern, in his campaign,
debunked the threat and invincibility of the so-called evil Sovier
empire. Republican and Democratic Presidents preached that myth
for four decades, until the USSR self-destructed." Reagan had nothing to do
with it. McGovern, who would have thrown in the towel, was just as
tough. Neuharth concluded: "George McGovern. A
man before his time. Prescient. Decisive, but decent. The USA and
the world would have been far better off if we'd been heedful of
his early Watergate warnings and had put McGovern in the White
House in 1972." And how many millions more
would be calling each other "comrade"?

4) Conservatives contend
their tax bill cuts taxes for everyone who pays income taxes, from
top to bottom. Liberals counter that the tax bill is unfair since
it doesn't give money to those who work but don't earn enough to
pay income taxes. Guess which side ABC's story favored.

On Thursday's (June 19)
World News Tonight, Peter Jennings intoned: "On Capitol Hill
tonight, a Senate panel is putting the finishing touches on an $85
billion bill. It includes tax cuts for families, for investors,
and for education. But it also leaves out millions of Americans,
and passage of the bill very much depends on winning over the
public. Here's ABC's John Cochran." Cochran showed clips of
competing Republican and Democratic press conferences featuring
mothers to argue their cases. Cochran asserted that
"Republicans admit their capital gains tax cuts help the
wealthy, who have more money to invest, but they argue that most
of the cuts will go to the middle class, which has also jumped
into the booming stock market. And in the end, says Newt Gingrich,
the President will break with Democratic liberals and sign a bill
which is popular with middle class taxpayers." After a soundbite from
Gingrich, though, Cochran concluded his story the same way
Jennings had introduced it -- with the liberal spin: "And Old Democrats,
the liberals, fear Gingrich is right, that the President
ultimately will sign a tax bill that provides relief for the
wealthy and the middle class, but does nothing for the rest.
Peter."

5) The June 17 CyberAlert
detailed the softball questions from the left posed by Charles
Osgood to President Clinton on the June 15 Sunday Morning. The
week before Tim Russert, who normally does play devil's advocate
to both sides, showed how on the race issue the media often come
at the subject only from the left. The guest: Jack Kemp, who
opposed California's anti-preference referendum and is seen as too
liberal on racial issues by many conservatives. But Russert didn't
challenge Kemp with any conservative arguments, such as how by
making race the single most important criteria in college
admission, California furthered racial anger and only undercut
minority achievement since everyone assumed he or she got there
because of a quota. Instead, Russert pounced only from the left.
Here are his June 8 Meet the Press questions, as transcribed by
MRC intern Jessica Anderson:

-- "The state of
California and the state of Texas ended affirmative action for
college and law school application. This year, at California
Berkeley, California UCLA law schools, the number of black
students in the fall class is down 80 percent, number of
Hispanics, 50 percent. The University of Texas which usually had
forty blacks in every class at law school, more black lawyers have
come out of The University of Texas than in any school in the
country. This fall, zero blacks enrolled. That is the result of
the affirmative action policies in California and Texas." -- "You say it's a
tragedy, but isn't it a direct result of the kind of policies
espoused by Governor Wilson, Proposition 209, which you supported
during the campaign, which says, 'race cannot be a consideration,
period.'" -- "There was an
interesting study done in 1991, there were 3,485 blacks accepted
into law school. If it had been strictly based on test scores and
grade average, and race was not a factor, there only would have
been 687. And yet, of those thirty-four hundred who got in, they
had the same pass/fail rate in school and in the Bar exam as the
white students. The fact that race, as a factor, seemed to have
worked in 1991 in terms of the quality of people who graduated
from law school." -- "But, there is
legislation in, in the Congress, the famous Dole/Canady Bill,
which would say, 'race cannot be a factor, period.'" -- "But as long as
your party says that race cannot be a factor at all." -- "You know, for
this presidential election past, Hispanic voters went two to one
for Clinton/Gore, the first time the Democrats have carried
Hispanic votes in a presidential race. And yet there are some in
your party -- Pat Buchanan has said 'there should be a moratorium
freeze on all legal immigration for the next five years.'" -- "And for a
Republican to be elected the President of the United States, must
you reach out to blacks and Hispanics?" So much for balanced
questioning or challenging liberal assumptions.

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